Monday, October 6, 2014

Labour Day

Of course, it's also Labour Day. As a thought for the day we offer a quote from John Maynard Keynes, on employment and government spending. It's as relevant today as when he wrote it, in 1929.

The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature
which prevents men from being employed, that it is ‘rash’ to employ men,
and that it is financially ‘sound’ to maintain a tenth of the
population in idleness for an indefinite period, is crazily improbable –
the sort of thing which no man could believe who had not had his head
fuddled with nonsense for years and years.

The objections which are raised are mostly not the objections of
experience or of practical men. They are based on highly abstract
theories – venerable, academic inventions, half misunderstood by those
who are applying them today, and based on assumptions which are contrary
to the facts . . .

Our main task, therefore, will be to confirm the reader’s instinct
that what seems sensible is sensible, and what seems nonsense is
nonsense. We shall try to show him that the conclusion, that if new
forms of employment are offered more men will be employed, is as obvious
as it sounds and contains no hidden snags; that to set unemployed men
to work on useful tasks does what it appears to do, namely, increases
the national wealth; and that the notion, that we shall, for intricate
reasons, ruin ourselves financially if we use this means to increase our
well-being, is what it looks like – a bogy.

Read more about contemporary proposals for a government-funded Job Guarantee in the series of posts, beginning here, at New Economic Perspectives.

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